Mining for BitCoins is really easy, and just needs to be set up then left to mine. First
you.ll need to choose how you want to mine. It boils down to two options: mining by
yourself, or mining as part of a pool (where you pool your computer.s work with
other members and split the rewards when a block is produced).
If you mine by yourself, you.ll get to keep 100% of everything you earn. Just bear in
mind that there.s no way of knowing if and when you.ll produce a block.
Conversely, working for a pool means that you.ll get a steadier income (as the pool
is more likely to produce more blocks than you are by yourself), but you.ll sacrifice
some of your earnings to the person running the mining pool.
In this guide I.ll be showing you how to start mining for yourself, and also for mining in
the BTC Guild mining pool. If you.re using Windows or Ubuntu, Danny Stieben has
written a great guide to get you started over on the main MakeUseOf site.
For OS X we.ll be using the DiabloMiner.app, a frontend for the command-line
BitCoin miner DiabloMiner. You can download the latest version from this thread on
the BitCoin Talk Forum. Make sure you select the DiabloMiner version, not the
RPCMiner version (which uses the CPU instead of the GPU and is much slower as a
result).
Solo Mining
Configuring the BitCoin Client
Before we can start mining, we need to set up the client to act as a server that
communicates with the BitCoin network so that we can mine by ourselves. This
involves editing a file called bitcoin.conf (or creating one if it doesn.t already
exist). This is stored in the Application Support folder, along with the other BitCoin
files.
First, browse to the Application Support folder to see if there is already a
bitcoin.conf file. If there is, open it with TextEdit. If it isn.t, we.ll open TextEdit
anyway to create the file.
When we have TextEdit open, make sure that you.re working in Plain Text mode (as
formatting plays havoc with program files) by pressing cmd+shift+T. Then enter the
following text:
rpcuser=username
rpcpassword=password
rpcport=8332
server=1
You can change the username and password if you wish; for solo mining it doesn.t
really matter at all either way. rpcport is the port which BitCoin uses for uploading
and downloading new block information, and server=1 makes BitCoin enables
server functions allowing us to mine without connecting to a pool. Save the file; if
you.re creating it from scratch, make sure to disable “If no extension is provided, use
.txt”.
Now you can start BitCoin and it will automatically start up the server in the
background. When this happens it will start to download all the previous blocks it
can find, which can take a very long time. This can affect DiabloMiner, so you.ll
need to wait for it to finish.
Configuring DiabloMiner
When you start DiabloMiner for the first time, you.ll be greeted with the set-up wizard.
These are the settings you.ll want to enter:
Server host name or IP address: localhost
Server port number: 8332
Miner username: username (or whatever username you chose)
Miner password: password (or whatever password you chose)
Start mining automatically on log-in? No (so you can change
settings)
That.s it! DiabloMiner will take care of the rest. However, if you see an error like:
ERROR: Can't connect to Bitcoin: Bitcoin returned error message:
Bitcoin is downloading blocks...
It.s because the BitCoin client hasn.t finished getting set up yet. Unfortunately there.s
no easy way to tell when it.s ready, so you.ll just have to wait and try again later.
Mining Pool (BTC Guild)
Creating a BTC Guild Account
The first step to mining in a pool is creating an account with the mining pool. This is
usually done through the pool.s website – in this case http://www.btcguild.com.
Creating an account is just like creating an account on any website. There.s a link
for creating an account on the left hand side of the page under the login box. Just
choose a username and password and then click “Register”. You.ll instantly be
logged in with the username you just chose; there.s no confirmation email to worry
about
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